hypnolibertarian

Some commercials are perfect examples of hypnotic technique.  This morning I saw one that I had to admire for its mixture of techniques.  I have made disparaging remarks about Archer Daniels Midland, and take back none of them, but I must admire the skill of their advertising agency.

The commercial was, of course, for ethanol.  It was officially by some advocacy group; however, I strongly suspect ADM money is the primary part of their budget.

First is the text that moves across the screen during the scenes.  Easily read text emphasized the spoken points; however, over every scene, in text so faint it can barely be seen, is the word, “ethanol.”  The subtle, subliminal connection is made during the entire commercial.

A second item is a wonderful example of a reframe.  A rap against the ethanol industry is that it takes corn that could be used for food.  The commercial says, “We send 40% of the corn we get out for cattle feed.”  This mean, of course, that 60% of their corn — by far the largest producer and purchaser of corn in the country — is removed as a source of food.  This is akin to those drinks that proudly proclaim, “10% fruit juice!” instead of, “90% water and artificial ingredients!” How many would willingly buy the latter?

Combining techniques can be extremely effective.  Look for commercials that do this: combine techniques that we have spoken about to mix a conscious and an unconscious message.  Look to see if the conscious message is framed to make one side or the other to be better or worse.

Several questions have lead me to the conclusion that I should talk about levels of trance, what “light” means, what “medium” means, and what “deep” means.  All this terminology is confusing and sometimes not well defined, even among hypnotists.  I will set it out as I use the terms; however, don’t be surprised if they are used in other ways by other hypnotists.

A light trance is characterized by an opening of the unconscious mind to input in a special way, focused on the hypnotist, but with the conscious mind definitely present.  It will be experienced as a relaxed, pleasant state, where you hear everything that is happening, but you are too relaxed to care.

A medium trance is when there is a balance between the conscious and unconscious minds.  Ideomotor responses from the unconscious, such as catalepsy, arms and hands rising and falling, and signals from the unconscious are possible.  Much work can be done in the light and medium trances, and often is, placing suggestions in the unconscious mind.

A deep trance is when only the unconscious is present.  This is the state that most people think of when they think of hypnosis.  Suggestions can be made directly to the unconscious mind.  There may or may not be amnesia for the session.  Many hypnotists divide the deep trance into different stages, the first being somnambulism (an old term, meaning you can move and walk while still in trance), what has been called the Esdaile state, and a final state sometimes called Ultra-Depth (this term has been trademarked, and I believe some litigation is involved in its use) or extreme depth or many other names.  The Esdaile state is named for a Scottish surgeon who in the 19th century did hundreds of operations using only hypnosis.  It is characterized by either complete anesthesia or by being able to achieve complete anesthesia easily.

Many claims have been made for the extreme depth state.  Some say that it is easy to heal injuries or diseases in this extreme depth state.  Others experiment with clairvoyance and other psi / paranormal abilities in this extreme depth state.  Certainly more research needs to be done before any of these claims can be said to be substantiated.

A state when watching TV where you are totally involved in the story, to the point of not hearing those around you or any external sound or signal, is a deep trance.  Advertisers want to move you into commercials without disturbing that trance.  Many commercials will imitate TV shows to keep you in that state; others will start soft and grow louder to implant their message.  Business spend money on TV advertising because it works, and works well.

Can you remember when a TV show sucked you in completely?  What were the commercials?  Can you even remember?

For some time I have spoken of specific things that affect our minds in one way or another.  Now I’d like to talk about some of the institutional constructs that fashion our thinking, and the reactions we have both as children and adults.  These institutions create the patterns, the norms that make up our society.  They are the most powerful hypnotic agents we have.  They take children and adults and produce crowds that think similarly.  They are not “robot makers,” but they determine the broad patterns of how almost all of us think.

First and foremost is our parents; however, I will cover that in a future post.  A close second is our schools.  The school system is the best mechanism for indoctrination that we have.  From before first grade, in kindergarten, the school system takes up the primary part of your children’s day, teaching them, babysitting them, and (where I come in) indoctrinating them.  In general, indoctrination is nothing complex; it comes of simple repetition of a concept to minds who are not in a position to protest.  Children do not just learn to read and write.  They learn about the food pyramid, and that drugs are bad, and that Carol has two mommies, and that everyone is equal, and that it is dangerous to stick out from the mass.  Some of these things are taught purposely, and some are simply part of the context in which the kids spend their time.

Some of this is quite deliberate.  The people in the education establishment (which has some relationship to the federal government, but is not totally controlled by them) decides that a certain “lesson” needs to be taught.  This may be that homosexual sex is not a sin and that gay people are victims of prejudice, to the kinds of food they should eat, to what is important in life.  These are decisions that affect us for our entire lives, and don’t think that the corporations don’t know it.  They offer “educational material” and free handouts and lots of things that come to the schools, which they will use because it is easy.  Does anyone else remember films by Archer Daniels Midlands when you were in school about how important corn was, and how it can be turned into ethanol?  I do.  And now we are making ethanol while prices rise on food from the lack of corn and it takes more energy to create a gallon of ethanol from corn than it delivers in a car.  Corn farmers are delighted, especial the big ones (ADM).  No one else should be.

All this because ADM plans for the future and inculcated the idea of ethanol 30 years ago or more.  The schools are the place to mold the minds of children.  Children are turning in their parents for drug possession.  I’m not saying drug possession is good, but it shows the power of the schools, to indoctrinate them to turn in their own parents (although the home situation of most drug taking families may have something to do with it as well).

Think back to your school days.  What messages were given to you that you now question?  Did you believe them then?  Which ones do you not question?  Are you sure they are right, or are you conditioned to accept them?

I was just watching (re-watching) Cabaret, and it struck me that this movie (and the show, if done well) is one of the best examples of changing frames that I know.  You are led into the cabaret, the affair between two young people, and all is happiness and laughter.  They all dance, they all sing, they all laugh at the MC.  He sings a song as he dances around with someone in a gorilla suit, saying “If only you could see her through my eyes,” as the audience laughs uproariously.  Then the last line: “If you could see her through my eyes, no one would know she is Jewish.”  Suddenly a delightful romp become racist from end to end.

Changing frames in this sudden way can be extremely effective, either in drama or in commercials.  I just posted on unconscious responses, and how patterns, or models (some people call them memes) are activated by what we see and hear.  I’ve already spoken of the AT&T commercial.  This is another way of looking at what they do there: they set you up with a frame from a horror show and suddenly change frames to make it rather silly.  The effect is a “clunk” and a change in how you think about what was presented.  It might not get you to buy their product, but it will make you think just a bit differently about AT&T’s cell phone service, which is what the commercial is intended to do.

Another from Cabaret: a handsome, even beautiful young man, blond hair, blue eyes, at a picnic starts to sing a song of optimism and hope: “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”  Gradually the camera pulls away, and you see the young man is in a Nazi uniform.  As the camera pulls back farther, you see he is surrounded by other Nazis.  Then, in the last moments of the song, all of their right arms rise in the Nazi salute.  What was a beautiful moment has become terrifying, and that confusion is uncomfortable.

Changing frames is a good way to cause confusion, and sometimes to take one set of patterns and cross-connect them to something you want to sell.  I will talk about other aspects of changing frames later, but this one aspect of making a large change after you have set up a situation is often used to make those connections.  Another example is the Target commercials, back when they had the little dog as their mascot; a series of glamorous, beautiful scenes would suddenly resolve to the dog (who looked rather silly) and the Target logo.  This particular switch was not well thought out; it took the glamorous image they were trying to create and brought it down to the level of a cute, but ugly dog.  And that is why you don’t see it any more.  The results weren’t what they wanted.

From some of the comments I have seen in a few of the recent posts, I can tell that I was remiss in not explaining the difference between conscious and subconscious reactions, how they differ and how they are the same.  To say that one becomes “aroused” at an unconscious level does not mean that every male gets an erection and starts panting.  Exactly what it does mean takes a bit of explaining.

I have talked about the unconscious mind as a series of patterns, or models, of how the world around us works.  These models can be thought of as “shifting” or “shuffling” constantly in response to the input we get from the world around us.  It is this “shuffling” that gives things context; for example, if we are talking about dogs and I ask how your bitch is doing, I clearly mean your (female) dog, not your wife.

Things that we see, that we hear, that we talk about, and that we think about can bring some of these patterns “up towards consciousness.”  This is similar, to those of you in computer science, to processor chips and disk drivers that try to predict which memory is to be accessed next and to have it in memory (register or main memory) and therefore save time.  These patterns in our subconscious come close to the surface but don’t necessarily become conscious unless the subject becomes more direct or the situation requires some action or decision based on those patterns.

Thus, a number of lingerie clad women flashing on the screen rapidly followed by a different subject (like helping little girls with their self-esteem) “arouses” us subconsciously in the sense that these sexual response patterns are close to the surface of our minds.  If a commercial (or a TV show) has a beautiful woman running her hands up and down her body, preening herself for the audience, then these patterns rise to the level of consciousness and we become physically aroused and consciously know why.

Physical reactions sometimes happen with unconscious stimulation, but often do not.  However, with those patterns right up at the edge of consciousness, those reactions can be used in all sorts of ways, sometimes on the conscious level and sometimes on the unconscious level by using other images directly after such sexual “flashing” images.

So keep in mind that you may not be aware of your unconscious “arousal”.  It does not mean you are physically responding, or even are consciously aware of it.  It means that those patterns are being activated and moved to the forefront of the brain (RAM from disk, to go with the computer analogy).

Some religious disciplines, such as Buddhism and some Sufi paths, strongly recommend a “mindfulness”, or an awareness of what is going on inside.  If this is not done obsessively (and therefore becoming conditioning in and of itself) it can assist us in avoiding the effects of this kind of conditioning.

A famous hypnotist, Milton Erickson, said, “All good inductions are based on confusion.”  Confusion is caused when something we don’t expect happens, or when something we do expect happens in a way to overload our normal conscious processing.

Confusion is  a very uncomfortable state for almost all of us.  Confusion in trance depends on the automatic and natural tendency to escape the confused state, even into trance.  Many commercials and political ads depend on confusion to get their message across.

An example is the recent Obama ad against McCain, attacking him on energy.  It starts with one of those pictures of McCain that shows him under stress.  It then lists the various mechanisms of alternative energy that it claims McCain has voted against.  As it does, the sound speeds up and the names flash faster and faster on the screen.  It becomes harder and harder to keep track, to read the words and hear what is said, especially as they both speed up more and more.  As a result, unless you read very quickly, and in fact even if you do, you become confused.  The squeal of the fast voice is annoying and incomprehensible.

Suddenly it all stops, and everything returns to normal.  We grab onto what follows like a life raft, as it tells us how McCain gives huge tax breaks to Big Oil — and we are so very, very ready to believe it because it gives us relief from the confusion.

None of this is clear from the ad —  it is just one more negative campaign ad.  But because it acts on our dislike of confusion and a knowledge of how to induce confusion, it is much more effective than a plain text ad claiming that McCain is a nasty fellow with respect to energy.

Watch for other ads that use confusion, fast images, uncomfortable sounds.  They are not rare at all.

One commercial that is fascinating me in the way that it combines hypnotic techniques is the new Dove commercial.  It is so damn clever that I’m coming to hate it.  It shows a cute little girl looking at a sexy ad at a bus stop.  All of a sudden we are drawn in to the add and a large number of images flash before us at very high speed.  Then we come back to that little girl, and Dove announces that they are spending lots of money on self-esteem workshops, letting small girls know they are beautiful and attractive despite all those evil examples by the models.

This is insidious.  First the commercial has you connect with the sympathetic young girl, who really is quite cute.  Then, suddenly, the sex assault: dozens of images of scantily dressed beautiful women, all hitting you at once.  Any male, and most females, will be aroused at this kind of rapid image presentation.

It finally ends on the girl, and then Dove goes into its pitch.  However, ending up on the girl creates a subconscious guilt about feeling sexual, aroused, while looking at a small girl.  Dove gives you an out by allowing you to help her, and others, with their “self-esteem.”  All you need to do is buy Dove.

I have no idea what this did to their sales, but I would be very surprised if they didn’t go up a whole lot.  This kind of attack on our unconscious minds is practically irresistible, and is unconscious to most people.

Can you find commercials that do something similar?

Whenever someone (like me) begins to research the various technologies that exist for conditioning humans, one question comes up: how can I avoid conditioning?  How can I avoid the subconscious reaction to these techniques?

What does help?  I’ll go into some things in my later blogs, but I will say the answer is neither clear nor it is easy.

McCain on Obama

As a political example, let’s look at McCain’s ad on Obama.  This is an entire campaign, which ad campaigns usually are, and aimed at what the McCain campaign saw as Obama’s greatest strength — the aura of invincibility and inevitability that surrounded him after he defeated Clinton in the primaries.  In particular, when he traveled in Europe, the crowds were gigantic, and he was treated as a rock star or perhaps the Pope.

The McCain campaign relied on a reframe to change this situation, and it was a brilliant reframe.  The presupposition is that Obama is a good candidate, and a good President, because of his charisma.  Whether this is true or false is not our concern here; what interests us is how McCain combated this.

The reframe was a simple one; McCain’s media people did not bother to fight Obama’s celebrity.  Instead, the reframed the situation to say that Obama was *only* a celebrity.  The first commercials flashed images of other celebrities that bring large crowds, but who are famously brainless; Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.  The pundits universally derided these ads as being nonsense, but from an unconscious point of view they are brilliant: they form a connection between the very intelligent Obama and brainlessness.  Paris Hilton’s riposte may have been funny, but the McCain campaign was laughing all the way to the bank; it continued their connection of brainless celebrities attacking McCain, no matter how funny it was.  A good sign is the way Hilton’s film got coverage for a couple of days, then people realized what they were doing, and it disappeared.

Later ads continued the reframe, and continued (and continue) it effectively.  The latest shows Obama surrounded by lights and cheering crowds, then has him drawing back into a very small picture as the crowd and lights are removed.  It is an amazingly effective ad; it says that without his props of lights and adoring crowds, Obama is a small, pathetic man.

Again, none of this has to do with the truth.  It has to do with effective unconscious communication, and so far the McCain campaign is winning.

Let’s pick apart one of the most common commercials: the series of AT&T commercial that seems to run twice an hour (at least) on almost every channel in the world.  I’ll describe one of them, but the rest are similar.  A sweet couple is moving into a new to them, but old and fairly scary looking house.  An old woman, thin, gaunt, tells them they are in a “Dead Zone” where calls disappear — forever!  The dad says, “But we have AT&T.”  And we see the guy with the glasses, with an army of folks behind them.  “You’re good.”  And the woman says to them, a bit spitefully, “Well, you have crabgrass!” and stomps away.  Then the usual text, “Avoid dead zones.  Call AT&T.”

This commercial works well on multiple levels.  The first is the obvious one: humorous, a takeoff on ten million horror movies and TV shows, a little flip at the end, gets the name in and the message so people understand it.  Top marks.

However, there is also a semi-conscious thing going on, which we recognize every time we look for it, but the commercial runs so often we just tune it out — and the companies depend on that, believe me.  The more you “tune it out” consciously, the more the message goes past the conscious mind into the unconscious.  The semi-conscious message is clear: things are incredibly horribly disastrous unless you choose AT&T.  Dead zones: eeeek!

The more unconscious message is unconscious only because it is a series of images that have culturally known responses; it’s not that hard to spot.  The beginning of the horror movie brings the harbinger of evil.  Oh, no!  Next someone has to be killed, of course.  However, the hero comes to save the day (early).  So we feel, unconsciously, not only relaxed from the slight charge but grateful to the guy who makes it all better.

None of this is rocket science; that we’ll take in a future commercial.  But we must not underestimate the three levels working together.  The more the commercial is unnoticed, the more the latter two levels work to create “good feelings” about AT&T.

Let’s compare Sprint commercials.  We have one with the CEO promising lots of good things: big deal.  And we have one that creates bad feelings if you don’t use Sprint (humorously, so as not to leave a bad taste in the mouth) but never resolves it (now that I think of it, that may not even be Sprint).  The worst thing Sprint ever did was to get rid of the Muldar in the black coat.

The message?  Commercials, both company and political, work on multiple levels.  The best ones are small examples of brainwashing: tension, release, savior (see Sargent, “Battle for the Mind” for a more complete description of brainwashing theory specifically.)